Why US readers keep weather eye on British papers

Could this be the reason that so many Americans are choosing to read British newspapers online rather than their own? Grant Perry points out, on Huffington Post, that a story published last week in Britain and elsewhere, about scientific study which provided the first evidence that human activity has altered rainfall patterns, received no play in the US media. He did a tracking job to show that the story ran in The Guardian, The Times and the Daily Telegraph. It also appeared in the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun. And it got major shows (in the English language) in Japan's leading daily, Yomiuri Shimbun, in India's national daily, The Hindu, and in papers in the Netherlands, and elsewhere across the world.

But no word could be found in America's three leading titles, the New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today. Indeed, according to Perry's researches, the story's only outing in the States was in the small circulation Daily India, based in Jacksonville, Florida, and a website called Free Internet Press.

He argues that the scientific study "was by no means... obscure or dubious". It was conducted by leading climatologists associated with top research centres in the UK, the US, Canada and Japan and was originally published in the "prestigious" British journal Nature . The study, co-led by two Canadian-based scientists, argued that greenhouse gases created through human activities, such as the combustion of fossil fuels, have had a significant impact on the fluctuation in rainfall during the 20th century. He concedes that widespread flooding ensured "great interest" in Britain, but that doesn't explain why it received world-wide coverage - except in the US. Perry quotes one of the study's co-authors, Dr Nathan Gillett, who explained that it was identifying overall human influence in global rainfall patterns rather than specific extreme events (such as Britain's floods) so it has universal relevance.

Perry concludes: "I'll leave it to others to speculate on why our media continues to ignore major developments in the climate change crisis." So will I. But I am willing to speculate that the narrow news agenda of American news outlets is a major reason for growing US interest in what our papers say.